Field
This disclosure is generally related to secure data transmission technologies. More specifically, this disclosure is related to a secure data transmission system that uses quantum states to detect eavesdropping.
Related Art
With the exponential growth in data communication and telecommunication over computer networks including the Internet, the technologies to protect private information transmitted on these computer networks from eavesdropping and other attacks have also been constantly improving and evolving. Various data encryption techniques have been used to protect various user data transmitted over the Internet, including search requests, search results, and financial information related to e-commerce. These technologies include both symmetric and asymmetric encryption technologies, have been used. Symmetric encryption algorithms are typically more efficient than asymmetric encryption algorithms. However, distribution of the encryption/decryption key between communication parties can pose certain security risks. Asymmetric encryption (also called public key encryption), on the other hand, does not have the key distribution problem, because different keys (public and private) are used to encrypt and decrypt data. Public key encryptions are often used for secure exchange of symmetric encryption keys. Public key cryptography systems are considered more secure, because they rely on cryptographic algorithms based on mathematical problems that currently admit no efficient solution, particularly those inherent in certain integer factorization, discrete logarithm, and elliptic curve relationships.
One of the secure Internet protocols, HTTPS (Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure) plays an important role in Internet-based commercial activities. For example, it has been used for payment transactions or banking activities on the World Wide Web. In a conventional HTTPS setting, before data transmission, the server side and client side agree on an encryption scheme and keys that will be used to exchange data. The client may generate a pre-master key, encrypt the pre-master key using the server's public key, and send the encrypted pre-master key to the server. Both the server and client can then generate a master key (also known as the session key) based on the pre-master key. The session key can then be used to encrypt data flows between the client and server.
Although current secure data transmission technologies, including HTTPS, can provide certain protections against common attacks, such as simple man-in-the-middle attacks and eavesdropping attacks, they may still be vulnerable to other types of attacks. For example, HTTPS can be vulnerable to more sophisticated man-in-the-middle attacks and a range of traffic analysis attacks. Moreover, the advance in computational capabilities provided by cloud computing and quantum computing has increased the possibility of successful brute-force attacks. For example, an attacker may obtain the public-key-encrypted master key via eavesdropping and launch a brute-force attack to obtain the master key. As a result, any subsequent data communication using that master key will be compromised.
Moreover, current secure data transmission technologies often rely on hash-based techniques to detect eavesdropping attacks. Although these hash-based techniques can be used to verify data integrity, they often cannot detect passive eavesdropping, where attackers can copy or perform measurements on the transmitted signals.